Something transcendental. Beyond everything else. I'm so tired of churches, you know, they're everywhere back home. The same for Kant and Sartre and Kierkegaard, all those philosophers. But that's because you're right, it's the wrong direction, and not a very exciting way to learn, besides, always going off books.
Will you tell me about it? The way you were shown. What it was like.
[ It has always been abundantly clear to Roza that there is some foundational wound inside her, an inborn absence. This is sometimes attributed to a lack of parents or conventional raising or another, equally material construct, but Roza has always felt those were shallow interpretations of her longing. What Alaric describes sounds like wholeness. Independent wholeness that no one else can decide for you, or take away.
[ Talking about it will always bring him joy. His experience with Adam was a journey no one can comprehend without traveling the same path, one that many would judge before ever considering taking those same steps, rather than letting Alaric share it with them. That's why he starts the propaganda differently each time. ]
[ There's probably not a specific right answer, like an exam with a scantron and a grade at the end. But only probably, and even so, she wants to put to those hopelessly insufficient words the best possible explanation of her feeling: ]
I think of it as surrendering yourself to something greater. A goal or a presence or an experience. You open yourself up and you accept where it takes you. No matter what.
[ Exam or no: needless to say he approves. And then he decides to add his own delusion into the mix. ]
Pain is an essential part of life. It's one of the most powerful things our bodies are capable of, it belongs to no one but us. No one is meant to experience it but you. It may be mirrored, yes, but in the end it's always yours. Just like pleasure.
Both are equally virtuous. Both should be equally desirable. Unfortunately, we are taught to fear it.
That's true. That's really true. People miss out that way, don't they? They stay limited, and because of it, they lose.
Some of the things I've been doing lately have taught me about that a little more. Even more than dancing. But I didn't understand it that way, that clearly, until you said it.
It took me some time to understand, too. I had to meet a man and fall in love first. He had to lead me to a place where no one would find us - with nature, away from the noise, away from all the lights, the eyes. It's what you're trying to do, isn't it? Every time you visit them.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly! I fell in love once, too. That's the first time something really changed me. It's the only time I've ever really felt like the world outside could be closed out, and so often, just
I feel that out there, too. Like I need an unhinging. I'm all calcified all over, sort of stuck in this statue, but I'm alive underneath. I have to break the statue.
What did the man do, when you got to the secret place?
[ Such a prime target — or someone who knows exactly how to cater her lies to him. Alaric wants to take her regardless. ]
He gave me something to drink, and I dreamed. Broke out of the statue and traveled without moving a step. Saw myself split from my other half when we were born. [ He thinks his twin sister hasn't forgiven him since. ] A whistle guided me back to my body with the sunrise, but I couldn't recognize it. I had to relearn who I was to come inside. Break it open and accept that agony was a gift.
[ She's heard stories like this. People taking ayahuasca or salvia and seeing themselves sucked out of their own bodies, funneled into the superior veins of higher knowledge. But none described are this cataclysmic. A silence transpires wherein Roza tries to imagine her own personhood laid out in front of her like a map. What would it be like, to travel back into the most primal memory and crawl your way out of the grave of your earliest being?
She imagines Alaric next, but gives up only because she's faintly jealous, a dissipating smoke curl at the center of her brain — not just of the experience, but of this man who presumably got to witness it. ]
So that's why. I mean, that's why you're different from anybody else I've ever met.
Do you think it takes a certain kind of person to manage it? It doesn't sound like just anybody would be suitable.
I won't. I mean, I wouldn't. Maybe what's happened in my life comes as close as a person can actually get to readiness. I know some people here have had everything handed to them, but I swear to you, I'm not like that.
Most people spend forever looking for the other half of themselves, don't they? But I found mine when I was only eleven, and he was the same. We were the same. But when we were sixteen, we tried to go away with each other, and nobody would let us. Every single person in our lives worked to stop us. Even the ones who were supposed to love us, and we didn't have so many of those.
Having your other half torn away is Hard. For lack of a better word. So I wanted to die, and I felt like I was dying But nobody would let me do that, either.
[ Not for being alive, not for having people who supposedly love her. For knowing who completes her being, as much hurt as it's caused. ]
I understand. She was taken from me as well. My other half. I almost died for her. I needed her to die for me too, so we could be reborn. Together, the way we were meant to always be. But she wouldn't let me.
[ That's why Liv left him, after his psychotic break and attempted murder-suicide. Now Alaric knows: he only gets to die when she tells him to. Ma mort, he calls her, when they're alone. ]
Do you think that's mad?
normal people with normal levels of attachment that's all!!!
[ And this revelation registers sensibly: of course she feels a sense of connection, of commonality. Satisfaction thrums through her upon the discernment of what feels like a pattern. They're looking for more because more exists outside of themselves, like twin planets as much as they are people. ]
No.
And if it is, being separate from the person you belong with is a surefire way to make anyone mad. Sometimes things are so difficult that staying what people think of as sane would be crazier than being crazy.
So we're both alive, even though we didn't want to be. And when that happens, when your plans don't work, it's like, Now what? Now who am I?
I just let other people decide for me. For a long time.
[ Unseen, in that interim — at about minute six — she types Alaric?, and then deletes it. Seven minutes isn't so long. Don't be needy, she tells herself. ]
I promise, too. Although I have a hard time imagining anyone successfully bossing you around, anyway, it's still Important, I think. To say. That's the thing I see in what you're talking about, that kind of freedom. Like love without boundaries. Life, too.
You're right. I'm not very good at following orders.
I have this theory, Roza. That some people are meant for life, others are meant for death. Like an alignment. You find your other half by finding out which of the two you belong with. We spoke about dying, but I think we both stand on the other side.
I can be, but I want to choose. The choosing matters a lot.
I'd never thought of anything that way, but Thinking about it, the person I love, I think he would say he's meant for death, and that's part of why we fit. Sometimes that scares me because he'd maybe mean it's finite. We're all finite. But I know he'd be right, deep down.
Everything has a balance. Yin and yang, right? Because it's true. I belong so much to life that it overwhelms me. When you talk about what you've gone through to find your clarity, it gives me a sense that maybe it doesn't have to always be that way?
But some people never find their other half, so they're just out of balance forever.
Life and death belong together. One has no purpose without the other. What is to be alive if it doesn't end? What is death if nothing came before it?
It doesn't have to overwhelm you. You just have to find more room for it to fit. That's what it is, I think. Your self is telling you it's time to become more. So you're ready.
I think it must be pity. Or maybe I'm just overindulging in how lucky I feel by comparison. But I like how you say it, that they belong together. Like a prophecy, but one that keeps telling itself. Over and over. The cycle is the only thing that never changes.
I didn't realize I was ready before I came here but You're right about that. I keep having these strange feelings here, and that must be what it is. Like I'm coming out of my skin, or it isn't big enough. I'd never had it before. I'm ready.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Will you tell me about it? The way you were shown. What it was like.
[ It has always been abundantly clear to Roza that there is some foundational wound inside her, an inborn absence. This is sometimes attributed to a lack of parents or conventional raising or another, equally material construct, but Roza has always felt those were shallow interpretations of her longing. What Alaric describes sounds like wholeness. Independent wholeness that no one else can decide for you, or take away.
She wants that, too. ]
no subject
[ Talking about it will always bring him joy. His experience with Adam was a journey no one can comprehend without traveling the same path, one that many would judge before ever considering taking those same steps, rather than letting Alaric share it with them. That's why he starts the propaganda differently each time. ]
Do you understand the purpose of pain?
no subject
[ There's probably not a specific right answer, like an exam with a scantron and a grade at the end. But only probably, and even so, she wants to put to those hopelessly insufficient words the best possible explanation of her feeling: ]
I think of it as surrendering yourself to something greater. A goal or a presence or an experience. You open yourself up and you accept where it takes you. No matter what.
no subject
[ Exam or no: needless to say he approves. And then he decides to add his own delusion into the mix. ]
Pain is an essential part of life. It's one of the most powerful things our bodies are capable of, it belongs to no one but us. No one is meant to experience it but you. It may be mirrored, yes, but in the end it's always yours. Just like pleasure.
Both are equally virtuous. Both should be equally desirable. Unfortunately, we are taught to fear it.
no subject
Some of the things I've been doing lately have taught me about that a little more. Even more than dancing. But I didn't understand it that way, that clearly, until you said it.
no subject
no subject
I feel that out there, too. Like I need an unhinging. I'm all calcified all over, sort of stuck in this statue, but I'm alive underneath. I have to break the statue.
What did the man do, when you got to the secret place?
no subject
He gave me something to drink, and I dreamed. Broke out of the statue and traveled without moving a step. Saw myself split from my other half when we were born. [ He thinks his twin sister hasn't forgiven him since. ] A whistle guided me back to my body with the sunrise, but I couldn't recognize it. I had to relearn who I was to come inside. Break it open and accept that agony was a gift.
[ basically, he tripped balls ]
no subject
She imagines Alaric next, but gives up only because she's faintly jealous, a dissipating smoke curl at the center of her brain — not just of the experience, but of this man who presumably got to witness it. ]
So that's why.
I mean, that's why you're different from anybody else I've ever met.
Do you think it takes a certain kind of person to manage it? It doesn't sound like just anybody would be suitable.
no subject
That's the only thing that can stop you. If you let it.
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I mean, I wouldn't. Maybe what's happened in my life comes as close as a person can actually get to readiness. I know some people here have had everything handed to them, but I swear to you, I'm not like that.
But what do you think? You'd know best.
no subject
[ So she's perfect for it. ]
You aren't here alone. What would they think of you doing this?
no subject
My brothers, maybe not. I think they'd worry, but for different reasons.
[ One about her, one about what theoretical damage could further scar the family name, should she come away from this experience so changed. ]
But if I told them, it would be after. I think that some things should be secret. It keeps them sacred.
cw: possible incoming death and suicide talk
Have you ever felt like you were dying, Roza?
no subject
I guess it spreads.
no subject
Who caused it?
suicidal ideation talk probably ongoing intermittently here forever
Most people spend forever looking for the other half of themselves, don't they? But I found mine when I was only eleven, and he was the same. We were the same. But when we were sixteen, we tried to go away with each other, and nobody would let us. Every single person in our lives worked to stop us. Even the ones who were supposed to love us, and we didn't have so many of those.
Having your other half torn away is
Hard. For lack of a better word. So I wanted to die, and I felt like I was dying
But nobody would let me do that, either.
cw: just a lot of messed up stuff wow these two
[ Not for being alive, not for having people who supposedly love her. For knowing who completes her being, as much hurt as it's caused. ]
I understand.
She was taken from me as well. My other half.
I almost died for her. I needed her to die for me too, so we could be reborn. Together, the way we were meant to always be. But she wouldn't let me.
[ That's why Liv left him, after his psychotic break and attempted murder-suicide. Now Alaric knows: he only gets to die when she tells him to. Ma mort, he calls her, when they're alone. ]
Do you think that's mad?
normal people with normal levels of attachment that's all!!!
No.
And if it is, being separate from the person you belong with is a surefire way to make anyone mad. Sometimes things are so difficult that staying what people think of as sane would be crazier than being crazy.
So we're both alive, even though we didn't want to be. And when that happens, when your plans don't work, it's like,
Now what? Now who am I?
I just let other people decide for me. For a long time.
no subject
[ It is crazy, of course it is. Z̴̲̈e̷̖̼͠p̴̢̄͛h̷̰̋̈́ỉ̵̱̯̈́r̵̜̩̒͌ Alaric knows who he is, he's always known. He's always known.
He's always known.
He's always—
(Seven minutes pass without a reply. He only notices a few seconds after opening his eyes, Eve suddenly wrapped around his arm.) ]
You don't have to do that anymore. Not with me. I promise I'll do the same.
no subject
I promise, too.
Although I have a hard time imagining anyone successfully bossing you around, anyway, it's still
Important, I think. To say. That's the thing I see in what you're talking about, that kind of freedom. Like love without boundaries. Life, too.
no subject
I have this theory, Roza.
That some people are meant for life, others are meant for death. Like an alignment. You find your other half by finding out which of the two you belong with.
We spoke about dying, but I think we both stand on the other side.
no subject
I'd never thought of anything that way, but
Thinking about it, the person I love, I think he would say he's meant for death, and that's part of why we fit. Sometimes that scares me because he'd maybe mean it's finite. We're all finite. But I know he'd be right, deep down.
Everything has a balance. Yin and yang, right? Because it's true. I belong so much to life that it overwhelms me. When you talk about what you've gone through to find your clarity, it gives me a sense that maybe it doesn't have to always be that way?
But some people never find their other half, so they're just out of balance forever.
no subject
Life and death belong together. One has no purpose without the other. What is to be alive if it doesn't end? What is death if nothing came before it?
It doesn't have to overwhelm you. You just have to find more room for it to fit. That's what it is, I think. Your self is telling you it's time to become more. So you're ready.
no subject
I didn't realize I was ready before I came here but
You're right about that. I keep having these strange feelings here, and that must be what it is. Like I'm coming out of my skin, or it isn't big enough. I'd never had it before. I'm ready.
(no subject)